I disagree. He is a b2b (so is prob. Xhaka to a degree), and I still maintain we shouldn’t be playing with any b2b type midfielders in a 2-man midfield (but a pure play maker and a pure DM), but I think he’s really good at what he does and we’d see it if there was just a 3 man midfield he could play in. We seem to be getting quite a lot out of this square peg in a round hole right now and I’m happy about that.

Maybe the the versatility he adds to the squad warrants his place here.

Either that or Wenger is showing hints of trying some experimental midfield-totaalvoetbal where we build a midfield squad of "b2b-do-it-all"s lol (pls let that not be the case)

Like a lot of our players, he has some great qualities (engine, good instincts to get into the box and knack for getting scoring opps (not the most composed), works hard to track back), but he also has some flaws that expose themselves fatally in too many situations - undisciplined, not always aware of danger when we lose the ball, too enamored with getting into the box at the wrong times with a team that is sometimes crap at moving the ball through the opponent).

I find myself liking him although I realize he isn’t a great footballer but can occasionally have great games or even great strings of games. He would benefit from a really good tactical manager who worked more with him on the cerebral side and on overall reading the game.

Yeah this is the double-edged sword that Ramsey is… over the last x years it has been a problem that we tend to not know how to break teams down and are too ponderous on our counters, so we force the issue with more players forward, leaving our team more exposed to counters, etc… there are tactical issues, discipline, intelligence, etc. but at the end of the day, the biggest issue is that we always seem to have at least one big gap in offense (player-wise) and at least one in midfield and defense on top of that.